Posts by David Gosnell

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IE on Linux

> IE 6, 7, 8 and/or 9 can run on Linux.

They can indeed, but I found it was not always a reliable test since (at least using Wine) some critical aspects were delegated to the operating system which behaved differently. For example testing PNG alpha transparency would provide misleadingly optimistic results in my experience.

Client website updates

Good luck on that, if they were daft enough to provide logos to download and serve locally. Amongst my own clients, even the more alert ones aren't always too hot off the blocks with partner logo updates and so on. Or are they hoping to recoup their costs by taking action against anyone not doing so..?

Rival?

Surely it was this very organ that first reported with any kind of analysis on the buy-out of WhatsApp by Facebook, and the significant ($40 was it?) value placed on every user's plundered contact list?

Never trusted

Never really trusted Belkin for, well, anything - but least of all their DNS resolution. I did briefly use a router of theirs, but it displayed a very weird bug of occasionally and inexplicably transposing bytes in looked-up IP addresses. It's for emergencies only now, and didn't work last time I tried it anyway.

QNAP

My QNAP TS-212P was quickly patched, though there is word of a third vulnerability which the patch doesn't cover, so for the time being it's not accessible to the outside world. I note there's a "Qfix" dated yesterday that might well sort out the rest ... will investigate.

Locked phones

What proportion of customers buy network-locked phones these days anyway? I'm sure it's still quite a few, but surely this is all part of the sea change towards people recognising contracts for what they are: frequently uncompetitive hire-purchase schemes in disguise, where the customer would be better off buying SIM-free if they (or their plastic) can afford it. I bought my last phone outright from Argos of all places - cheaper at the time than any of the CPW/P4U type places, and costing less in total than a lot of contracts charge for the up-front fee for certain high-profile devices before the bazillion pounds a month for 30 years kicks in.

Re: Why does a camera need NFC?

NFC won't be used for the transfer itself, merely to initiate a one-off wifi/bluetooth/etc connection. NFC itself can only realistically transfer very small amounts of data, so for practical transfer purposes it is used to negotiate a connection by other means without confounding the user with SSIDs etc. A veil of security is provided by the physical proximity (millimetres) required for NFC devices to get cosy.

Re: "Make News Feed Better"

Re: What's the point of that?

Plenty enough of those, and they're inevitably the best people to throw adverts at in the first place... And besides, even if you turn the Facebook app's location-related menu options off, it still accesses GPS if enabled at the system level. Go figure.

"Make News Feed Better"

Then there is their new "make news feed better" initiative, which is solely about advertising. The user is presented with a series of posts, and asked to rate them on how much they look like adverts. It is clearly an attempt to explore making adverts look more like posts from your friends (so perhaps more likely to be read, though that depends on one's friends), and as such, any user's civic duty is to skew the feedback with as much randomness as feasibly possible.

Translate to emoji

I am advised that their "translate to emoji" top-of-the-menu option on mobile Chrome was an April Fool too. Probably. Or perhaps just another case of anything to do with emoji and/or bitcoins being inexplicably cool, rather than self-evidently retarded. Assuming the latter, given its continued post-noon presence.

LED Lamp

I've only ever used the LED Lamp app, requiring no silly permissions. Though of course that wasn't enough to stop some daft reviewer at one point claiming it was spying by needing camera permissions - required to activate the flashlight, duh.

No accountability

As the article alludes, this is all part of Facebook divesting itself of as much responsibility for basically anything as it possibly can. Remember when you used to actually be able to report posts and people without jumping through half a dozen patronising hoops on a road to nowhere? Now you're bloody lucky if one of the boilerplate reasons is remotely relevant. I usually choose pornography if nothing else suitable is available (please don't take this out of context), since a square inch of BOOBS (even with baby attached) obviously riles them soooo much. Piss easy to include an "Other" and text box option - except it means someone actually has to the read it and do something about it.

I've heard of Disgo

Questionable

The instant scanner's a load of pants. I have just tested it against one of my sites that I know for a fact has elements IE6 bodges rendering through not supporting at all, and there's not a glimmer of a warning. As others have suggested, everything seems to be about getting it looking right on mobile devices (which it already does, TYVM) and Windows 8.

Better than the Gadget Show anyway

(as if that's difficult, these days)

Their small tablet comparison ran to the iPad Mini and the Kindle Fire HD, and that's yer lot... I guess Apple and Amazon paid them not to include the Nexus 7, which would have wiped the floor with both of them. I can't even remember which one won, so irrelevant it became in an instant.

Easy phish for not terribly juicy info

'Cos in making it optional and something people have to lift a finger, they probably only have to supply half the kit they would otherwise. Same as with my (Panasonic, as it happens) telephoto lens, with a £50 rebate when I went to the faff of scanning barcodes and till receipts.

Shame

Upgrading and compatibility

Looks promising that they have included a facility to transfer data across. Hopefully that applies to paid purchases as well as saved game data. Shame it looks like compatibility is a bit of a mode-based fudge though - this could have been a real winner if designed so that it was essentially an original Wii with some extra oomph, which could have meant that any title could seamlessly play on any generation device, but with extra features, detail etc enabled on the U. With consoles typically sold as loss leaders, that could have played very nicely into the hands of Nintendo, and ease across a customer base that might take a little bit of persuading to make the jump otherwise.

Re: Mind the gap!

I doubt there will be that much 3G expansion now - and it's not for 100% money grabbing reasons. As I understand it, there were significant technical issues with expanding 3G coverage any further, which 4G by some magic was able to overcome, hence why that's seen as the way ahead and where the investment is being made. But I'm buggered if I'm paying for it! Wi-fi and 2G most of the time is enough for me, ta. :)

"using cellular merely to fill in gaps"

"using cellular merely to fill in gaps" - quite. But try telling that to the vocal minority on giffgaff who consider it their enshrined right to download gigabytes per day over 3G, and who stormed off in a huff when the tariffs were adjusted to make that at least remotely sustainable for the more reasonable masses...

Novatech

For cheap but hopefully not so nasty, please can we have a review of the Novatech "nFinity" ultrabooks, as previewed way back in March? The me-too-resolution screen would seem to be the only downside to the specs, and quite possibly liveable with for the sub-£500 asking price. TYVM.

Double dip

Why sell one iPad Mini when the fanbois will also buy its retina replacement in a year's time, and double the already exorbitant profit? In any rational world this would be an issue, but ... yeah, well there you go.

Re: Red Button

Hoping that one day MHEG might support all the cleverness that teletext did, and that BBCi in particular might include all the pages that Ceefax used to... Not holding my breath though.

Performance wise, seems to depend a lot on the equipment manufacturer. Our Humax is more or less instantaneous whereas our old Inverto could be ponderous. I believe with teletext there were only a couple of manufacturers of the chipsets used, whereas there is more diversity with MHEG.

Re: Just what we need

It's high time Google relaxed whatever criteria it enforces to include the official Google Play store. It helps none with perception of the platform to find that probably 50% (by model, not by volume) of the Android tablets in particular out there only officially support some crappy third-party (and sometimes even manufacturer specific) store with none of the apps people want (like iPlayer) - and certainly not the classic Google set like Maps, gMail etc that people might reasonably assume not only to be available but indeed already installed, but oh no. There's already enough fragmentation on the platform without more introduced by sheer politics rather than technological limitation.

USP

From several years' experience of various different PVRs, a USP to me would be reliability - that's to say, the certainty (barring mechanical failure) that a recording set will in fact record at the appointed time, and not instead be forgotten about because of some arbitrary system reset, re-scan or lock-up the unit decided to initiate just to be bloodyminded. Sadly that kind of knowledge only comes from extensive use, so never makes it into reviews, only retrospective support forums.

Re: Fossil?

Traditionally, the definition of a fossil appears to require petrified form, which amber-entombed insects etc are not, however it seems this has relaxed - i.e. depends whose dictionary one takes as canon.

On a smaller screen...

On a smaller screen like this, it's probably excusable. Not sure I would want it running much higher in practice. Obviously 1280 x 800 would be far preferable though, as with most widescreen portable devices.

Of course Berwick wasn't first, either

Small areas of the UK went digital-only as much as a couple of years before Berwick, where active relays were in use for tricky terrain/geographic reasons and residents had to choose one or the other, unsurprisingly opting for digital. This was the case in part of my home town, and I very much doubt there weren't other similar areas around the land.